A state founded on communist principles is approving its future leader, the third member of a family dynasty. A young man, not yet 30, he has no experience of government. He will head East Asia's second nuclear state, able to fire missiles at South Korea, Japan and possibly the United States.
With his appointment yesterday as an army general, Kim Jong-un has attained a senior position in North Korea's most important institution, the first step towards inheriting power from father Kim Jong-il.
Thousands of delegates have flooded into Pyongyang to attend the first congress of the Korean Workers' Party since 1980, which opened yesterday and will approve the choice of Jong-un. The 1980 event was called by then president Kim Il-sung to approve Jong-il as his successor.
This spectacle of an ailing dictator appointing his inexperienced and unknown son to succeed him is hard to imagine in the 21st century, an era of meritocracy, intense competition and 24-hour information.
It's certainly against the principles of North Korea's founding ideology of communism, as the People's Daily pointed out in two articles a month before the 1980 congress. 'Within a Communist Party, the fact that one individual leader can take the final decision is feudalism and completely contrary to Marxism. A system under which one person can select his own successor is inconceivable.'
To be sure, dynasties exist elsewhere. George W. Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush, were US presidents. And in China, Vice-President Xi Jinping is the son of Xi Zhongxun , a veteran party revolutionary who became a state councillor and deputy prime minister. Xi is likely to succeed Hu Jintao as president and party chief.
Bo Xilai , party chief of Chongqing and a member of the Politburo, is the son of Bo Yibo , one of the 'eight immortals', veteran party leaders who surrounded Deng Xiaoping . Li Xiaopeng , vice-governor of Shanxi province and ex-president of Huaneng Power International, is the son of former premier and NPC chairman Li Peng .