Category: Kim Jong Un

Today’s big news from North Korea is that Kim Jong Un didn’t kill his wife after all. Dark rumors had been swirling in the South Korean press — the kind of apocryphal rumor that’s more significant for the very fact of its circulation than anything else — that Kim Jong Un had purged Jang Song-Thaek over an affair with Ri “when she was a singer for the Unhasu Orchestra.” Ri has since appeared at a ceremony marking the second anniversary...

KCNA has just announced that Jang Song Thaek was executed shortly after this party meeting, after confessing to “attempting to overthrow the state by all sorts of intrigues and despicable methods.” It also released this picture of him, possibly the last of his life. Such a nice, clean suit, too. [via Yonhap] As they say around these parts, sic semper tyrannis. As I noted this morning, Jang had many victims of his own in the camps. Most of them left...

[If you haven’t read yesterday’s post on the purge in Pyongyang, start there.] China has summoned Kim Jong Un to Beijing “as soon as possible” to kowtow and offer tribute discuss what Yonhap describes as “the North’s long-term stability and bilateral relations.” China seems displeased with Jang’s ouster, and in case that message was too subtle, China also staged a 5,000-man night landing exercise on the Yellow Sea coast near North Korea (ht: Adam Cathcart). Kim Jong Un now faces a...

North Korea watching is an inherently speculative hobby. How could it be otherwise when our most reliable information comes from satellite images and reports from KCNA, the world’s least credible news organization? The problem with having no solid facts to argue is that no one is really an expert, and anyone can pretend to be, present company included. Even “inside” sources are suspect; after all, much of their information is probably disinformation. That’s why you’ll see a lot divergent and...