Kim Jong-un’s New Entourage

Understanding Pyongyang Inner Circle
Studying Pyongyang leadership is an unenviable task, much like Kremlinologists who received no credit for their work after they failed to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but it should not be a thankless one. When confronted with a regime as closed and as secretive as Pyongyang’s, the only way for scholars to get around the fog is to capitalize on the little information available, although sometimes that information might turn out to be unreliable. The task becomes even more difficult when dealing with a regime in Pyongyang that purges officials on a regular basis, where the term Pyongyang shuffle, a seemingly poor Machiavellian joke is used to demonstrate how quickly people can fall from grace.

This piece, in its attempt to examine the up and rising military and party officials who have emerged under Kim Jong-un during the past two years, might seem like a Sisyphean task given the opacity and the quick turnaround rate of purges in Pyongyang. But in trying to understand who in the post-Jang period are most likely to fill the power vacuum besides the Dear Leader, one can piece together how Kim Jong-un reshuffles his key personnel to accomplish his ultimate goal of consolidating his unitary leadership. How long these officials stay in the limelight is not important, but it is rather who and what purposes they serve that demonstrates the bigger picture for regime stability in the Kim dynasty.